Even so, XZH Yiwu, for example, is much heavier than YangQingHao Yiwu, which all seems to be light and delicate. But YQH Yiwu is really, really, good, on a good day. It's not a mild tea, despite all that lightness.!

I have to agree. It seems like this tea can be do sensitive to temp, humidity, brewing, wind velocity,the color clothes I'm wearing. IDK.But some days this is my favorite young tea (see avatar)Then other days I just can't find the magic in it.

Isn't it somewhat of a moot point to compare Changtai and XZH anyway, since their prices are often so far off? At least for recent productions, a lot of Changtai stuff is not even in the same league as XZH, pricewise.

I haven't had any XZH, so I can not really compare them.

The Changtai I have had is mostly similar to what people have mentioned here. Mellow, uneventful, but often very drinkable for the price. I think I have mentioned before, a 2007 Jingmai cake from Changtai group that is really decent. It's mellow, drinkable, and also around $20. It is also the dirtiest cake I have probably ever encountered, but for $20, meh, what can you expect? I couldn't find any of the Jingmai on Taobao, but it's the same wrapper as this "Nannuo" cake. I highly doubt I can find a XZH cake from 2007 for $10-$25, so comparing them is a little bit apples and oranges, no?

It's a matter of preference, something that can be mild also implies it could be subtlety if you think about green tea. 05 Yi Chang Hao Ji Pin is one of my favorite teas still, my meaning is I just don't wanna spend on their earlier products. I don't consider Changtai with greatness, but very enjoyable tea for the price, in fact Yi Chang Hao series was kinda first cake that introduced a hint of Yiwu gu-shu to the Koreans (I know they are blended), now Koreans know much more than that.

Those tribute Puerhs for Qing court were also young spring leaves from Yiwu..the one who have tasted that mellon when it was found in the Forbidden City mentioned, it had 'no taste'. Old Chinese considered a habit of aging tea should be applied to low-quality teas, didn't they?

If a tea kicks ass throughout his whole lifetime, it'd be great and that's why LBZ is famous.

Thing is, there are lots of better teas out there than bad Changtai, for the same price or less. The better Changtai aren't amazing and they traditionally cost quite a bit. Gotta realize...those 2003 100g Wistaria Yiwu tuos costs (or at least used to) roughly the *same* as the 2003 Changtai Yiwu xiaobings, and from what I read of the xiaobings, the tuo is in another class entirely. If you run by most of their rough prices, you'll find that much better tea will only cost a bit more, or it's easy to buy Boyou, Yibang Chamasi/Tai Lian, or any number of outfits, particularly outfits that own their own plantations, with same/better tea for less.

The latter is a famous tea that has gone out of fashion, but it's still a really pleasant tea for drinking, and has a complex variety of fruit taste in it.

Pure and simple, Changtai focuses on producing easily acceptable tea for the mass market. I'm not a mass market target unless I'm quaffing one of those cheap jinzhushans. That's twenty bucks for the '09, and that series has an actual track record of satisfying people. Good value, but Changtai is not a premium maker, and only rubes (and some rich people) spend money on their really expensive teas like the 2010 Yichanghao Renhe Kunlushan, or this latest track of pressing maocha from 2005 or 1998 and doing some other special, special cake. Rich people go after those limited series ChenYunHaos and other brands us peons never heard of. Same with ChenShenHao. Same with most other big names like Guanzizai.

Anyways, perhaps we should get Scott@YS to help decide this East Coast/West Coast debate. After all, he got the hits from both...

Things got far, this post isn't about Changtai, plus I am not a serious drinker of Puerh anyway..if someone can inform me with a good Yiwu brand, it'd be great

You mentioned Yi Chang Hao being over-priced..that's exactly what I think about other Yiwu brand like CGHT. CGHT, founded by Chen Zhi-tong, Changtai founded by Shi Kun-mu..to me both belongs as money-maker using fame for profit. Chen Zhi-tong promoted GFZ which wasn't considered Yiwu back then, it sure isn't mild as Yi Chang Hao's

I only like Changtai's Yi Chang Hao series and Cha Zhong Yuan/Wang Cha. So your comparison of unheard Changtai and houde tea wasn't inspirational, not to say a price difference. Anyhow, I will step aside this topic as my knowledge limits but if someone informs me some great Yiwu brand (most of Yiwu I've had these days are unlabelled)..it'd be great...but not XZH!

Agreed. I have a seller in HK who has a stock of 01 Yichanghao. If any of you want some, it can be had for $200 a cake. Nothing too impressive, but I guess it's ok to drink now. Yichanghao isn't even gushu, so why are we talking about them?

I've drunk this tea and couldn't get very much out of it. Way too mild and lacklustre for my taste. I don't think it's going to develop into something wonderful.

There seems to be varying definitions of what gu shu is. How are you defining it? Also, a lot of the tea get mixed with old and new trees as I've read they grow together. I could see real gu shu, supervised and sworn to, being sold like special appelate wines. I guess they already are.

No, I have not. Do you think I need to, to prove anything? Whether Peak of the Clouds is an individually good tea or not is besides the point, not to mention that it's not exactly commonly seen (I've never seen it anywhere, not even on chinese boards). What is the point is that there are tons of tea out there, made by people who'll give good tea for a good price. There are tons of abandoned tea brands with good tea having been made. It may be hard work to sample through to something genuinely good, but there is more of a payoff than trying to sample a range of teas from a maker that has already disappointed--and is a famous enough brand that everyone knows what the good teas are. JakubT, if anyone presents you with a recent Dayi that has very little information about it on the web, then that should set off some alarms. Even the exclusive Dayi gift tea handed off to graduates of Peking and Tsinghua University are known quantities. People know about the best tea from famous brands, one way or another. It's one thing to give something like the blend of 2005 maocha Changtai tea offered by Houde a shot. I trust Guang to have a sensible approach to tea. All that might go wrong is just something that's a different aesthetic than what appeals to you. Reading the broad web, I'm not so generous to Daniel Liu. It's not that I think it would be bad, but I have a really long list of teas that deserve more of a shot, like the new tea Nada's offering...

I don't really have a strong opinion on the subject, nor have I had enough experience or knowledge to notice the kinds of nuances under discussion here.

But just stepping back a bit, I think it makes very little sense that such a sweeping statement [as the title of this thread] would have any validity. There are just too many variables into what goes into making a good tea, and I'm personally not such a terroirist that I believe this slight geographic difference would be the main aspect of what makes a tea age well. Even if there is such a difference, I'm a bit skeptical that anyone here has so finely tuned a palate that they could reliably and consistently tell the difference between by taste alone. And, unless one plans to become a tea blender, I don't know that most of us have a need to be able to discern these kind of minute differences.

Further, as others have pointed out, I don't think there are many aged (let's say, > 50 years) teas about which we can say with any degree of confidence where the leaves came from, and that they were from a single area only (vs. blends). Many things have changed since then; how today's teas will age is anyone's guess. Speculating about it is maybe interesting, but it's pretty much just speculation.

At some point, old tea starts to just taste like old tea. There is going to be some variation in taste, of course (though much of this will come from storage, and not just the inherent properties of the leaf), and differences in how the tea affects one (whether you want to call it 'qi' or something else).

shah82 wrote:No, I have not. Do you think I need to, to prove anything? Whether Peak of the Clouds is an individually good tea or not is besides the point, not to mention that it's not exactly commonly seen (I've never seen it anywhere, not even on chinese boards). What is the point is that there are tons of tea out there, made by people who'll give good tea for a good price. There are tons of abandoned tea brands with good tea having been made. It may be hard work to sample through to something genuinely good, but there is more of a payoff than trying to sample a range of teas from a maker that has already disappointed--and is a famous enough brand that everyone knows what the good teas are. JakubT, if anyone presents you with a recent Dayi that has very little information about it on the web, then that should set off some alarms. Even the exclusive Dayi gift tea handed off to graduates of Peking and Tsinghua University are known quantities. People know about the best tea from famous brands, one way or another. It's one thing to give something like the blend of 2005 maocha Changtai tea offered by Houde a shot. I trust Guang to have a sensible approach to tea. All that might go wrong is just something that's a different aesthetic than what appeals to you. Reading the broad web, I'm not so generous to Daniel Liu. It's not that I think it would be bad, but I have a really long list of teas that deserve more of a shot, like the new tea Nada's offering...

Well, still, you're comparing a tea you have tried with a tea you have not. Alarm bells may ring, but such a comparison still can't be done.

The originality of the cake (Peak of the cloud) is not really the point here. I simply set it as an example of Yiwu blend that performs rather well. Whether it is Changtai Peak of the cloud or Xie xie Big red crane, I don't care - here, I care about that it's Yiwu and that it's good.

I can not really take a part in the discussion whether Changtai is good or not, I have not tasted enough of their cakes and I have no problem believing you it's generally no good.

I do agree with what wyardley says above - such a sweeping statement is very daring and it does not seem really backed up to me.

JakubT wrote:I think that to the west, Jingmai is another nice area. On the other hand, to the east, I think Yibang can get pretty awesome (e.g., Shi Kun Mu).

JakubT, where can I get those pretty awesome Yibang's from? Could you please recommend some specific ones to try? Thanks.

Yes, it's the one that Shah mentioned. Whole cakes are sold out, but samples are available. If you're gonna try it, I'd go with the 25 sample. After the first tasting, I thought the tea is "only" very nice, but my appreciation grew up with every further session with it.

I just revisited the 06 "tong Qing hao" from puerhshop. I was really impressed it is a verry mellow tea made up of larger leaf.for 25 dollars this tea is a hell of a deal if you are looking for a slightly "aged" Yi Wu. A year in Guangzhou gives this tea a little more aged feel. It packs a strong calming cha qi that seems to be the qi of a older tea. It ticks off allot of the boxes for twenty some dollars. This tea is also a almost exaggerated example of the differences between east and west Banna during the aging process due to the coarse leaf grade.

JakubT, I don't have to be fair to a tea. It's perfectly okay for me to read your review of that tea and go, yeah, the usual for the area, age, and brand. I don't have to taste every single thing by every single brand to be fair, even if I've already seen a review for one tea that doesn't make me want to go out and try it.. That's essentially abusive and bullying logic.

This is just tea, there's a lot of it out there. Your derail is exactly what it is, even if you think people like me or MarshalN are judgmental snobs, or something. We can afford to be, because again, there's a lot of tea out there. We don't have to be enthusiastic about Yongpinhao or Changtai or CGHT, or XZH. We get to be opinionated and judgemental. As such, there's no need to make opinions about a person's mode of analysis. At best, one needs to say something *interesting*. What you've been saying is what every cost-conscious n00b has been saying since 2006. Famous XX cheap brand is better than Famous XX expensive brand. That usually does not turn out to be true, because they can't tell what brand is cheap for a reason and why another brand is expensive or not expensive. In a tangentially unrelated thread.

And absent more convincing reviews from other people, which I don't think it's forthcoming, I'm damned near certain to be right about the specific Changtai. Why? Changtai has an MO--it's not entirely because of a crappy piece of advertising that Changtai almost went out of business. If you're not getting something Changtai is consistently good with, or obviously flagship-like, you will almost certainly overpay for the quality. Even if I got that sample, I know I have an okay chance at liking it, but the chances of better than meh+ are very low.